What can I say? I love this book, even if saying it out loud makes me incredibly unpopular. Sure, Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho is graphically violent. Sure, many (fictional) women die. Sure, he rambles on and on about Whitney Houston, Phil Collins and designer fashion amongst other things (you can skip those bits, don’t say I said so). But, I’ll be damned, if this book didn’t make me smile in recognition at some points. And no, you should not be concerned for my mental welfare, these are things we can all smile at; Patrick Bateman lives in all of us.

Even if you’re not a 80s yuppy stockbroker slash serial killer, you can identify with his crazed need to fit in (although hopefully to a slightly lesser extent). You can sympathise with his frustration at the shallowness and materialism of his society (even if he revels in it). There’s humour in these pages, if you dare to look: his rage at being outdone in a business card-off, his excuse of needing to return some video tapes whenever he needs to get out of a pickle, the nemesis relationship he develops with a restaurant he can never get into (without trickery).

Yes, there are terrible things about this book. Did I mention the annoying in depth commentary on Whitney Houston, Phil Collins and men’s tailored suits? The animal cruelty is also pretty upsetting. Am I a bad person because hurt animals affect me more than hurt people? Maybe so but it’s the truth. There’s misogyny, homophobia, deranged torture and murder scenes, cannibalism and straight up insanity so, if you’re a touch squeamish and/or easily offended and/or grossed out, best not unwrap that adults-only shrink wrap. Head straight back to the store to see if you can get a refund or, the more likely scenario, send it back to whatever online shop you bought it from. But I don’t think anyone who buys American Psycho does so thinking it’s going to be a Jane Austen novel. If you did, I have one word for you: Google. Oh, and the fricking title: American Psycho. Didn’t that tip you off?

And, sure, maybe it ends and you’re left wondering what the fuck just happened (in which case, don’t watch the movie) but isn’t that half the fun? You’ve essentially been ‘gifted’ a fucked up, grotesque murder spree of a novel and you get to decide how it ends. Did he? Didn’t he? No one knows. It’s up to you. Go forth and make decisions, dear reader. The choice is yours.

***

I wrote this book review for a uni assignment a year or two ago. Haven’t changed a thing and, yes, I still love this book (and the movie). For your reading pleasure.

I don’t know if many of you watch The Affair. It has the old McNulty from The Wire and the sociopath chick from Luther in it (can’t remember her name). It’s about two married people that start an affair and the effect this has on their life and the lives of those around them.

The thing that makes it different (at least to me) is that it tells each person’s story from their POV. At first, just the guy and the girl who are cheating but now, in the second season, you also get the husband and wife who were cheated on. It’s fascinating to see what scenes each character focuses on and how the same scene can be shown differently from another character’s eyes.

Besides the story, I’ve always loved the opening sequence: tumultuous water and beach scenes spliced and overlaid with close ups and tiny fragments of the season. It’s very emotive and haunting and Fiona Apple’s voice over the top just makes it perfect.

The other day I was paying attention to the lyrics and they really struck a chord with me, especially the last few lines (“I have only one thing to do and that’s be the way that I am and then sink back into the ocean”). I’ve heard those last few lines so many times yet the epiphany was slow in coming. The video clip is included below for those who don’t watch it.

My thoughts:

Firstly, our actions have far reaching consequences we can never imagine, repercussions both good and bad

Then, every one of us is who they are, whether through nature or nurture, and we’re going to behave the way our nature determines. We have our own unique way of interpreting life and it’s not an easy thing to redirect the inevitability of our actions. We can only be who we are, even when we’re pretending to be someone else, that’s part of who we are although I do believe we can change

And finally, we are who we are and then we’re gone, leaving behind whatever mess we’ve made throughout the course of our life.

So, whatever you do, make sure you’re ok with what you’ve done and that the mess you’ve left in your wake was worth it. Or maybe that’s just my interpretation.

Yikes! That was all way too deep. I’m off to do something mindnumbing and brainfree. 🙂

It’s become a bit of a habit for me to read really depressing books during my uni break. The first book I read last break was The Road by Cormac McCarthy and no one could ever call that book uplifting (although it doesn’t end with 100% annihilation – close to it though). When I decided to take this break, I had The Color Purple already lined up as I’d previously ordered it from an online bookstore at a time when I, optimistically and foolishly, thought I might be able to read it while still studying. Ha!

So, with my book choosing history in mind, it was with some trepidation that I began to read. I only vaguely remembered the movie although I’d watched it multiple times as a kid. Some things came back to me but mostly the book felt fresh and new. Yes, it’s a grim read at the start; you feel sorry for poor Celie and Nettie and basically any other black person in the book. These characters existed in a tough time and to add being poor to the mix made things infinitely worse.

Celie’s life is pretty fucking shitty, no other way to put it. Yet while, she may not be the most confident woman at the start, she gets stronger and more confident as the story progresses. For all the terribleness that the characters and especially Celie go though, somehow the story ends on an inspirational note. Bonds form between the most unlikely people and Celie’s resilience and willingness to forgive and somehow overcome the shitty, shitty hand life dealt her is remarkable.

The book was written in 1982 and in some things it seems avant garde. I read it thinking I would get to the end and have suffered all forms of mental devastation but that wasn’t the case. In my mind, this book is about the ability of the human spirit to overcome hardship, to never give up home and to break its way out of the shell of victimhood. Celie could easily have remained trapped in a sense of helplessness but she didn’t. She adapted. Everyone changes in this book. Bad people become good. Weak people become strong. The strong falter. Everyone is affected by the situations they’re dealt and the way they choose to respond.

The author, Alice Walker, says the book is about god and how god exists in everything. One of the parts I love most is when Shug tells Celie her thoughts on god. Shug believes that ‘god’ exists in nature, in the flowers and the trees and fields. As much as god loves us, it wants us to notice what it does and love it; that’s where title of the book comes from. Shug says god wants us to notice when it makes the colour purple in a field and, if we don’t, god gets upset and makes something else to catch our attention and make us happy. It’s a beautiful conversation that comes right at one of Celie’s lowest points.

I definitely recommend this book. It’s touching and hilarious and unexpected all at once, which is exactly what you want in a book sometimes.

I wrote this review as the final assignment for my Writing the Zeitgeist unit two study periods ago. I got a High Distinction and was quite proud of myself. I had to find a clip of the concert on YouTube because I couldn’t remember all that much of it (it was pretty awesome) but it seems I did a good job of capturing the essence of the show, nonetheless.

***

The Metro Theatre is the chameleon of music venues. On an almost nightly basis, the bare bones room morphs from seated comedy to rockabilly swing, bass thumping southern rap to sultry blues and everything in between. Tonight, Flosstradamus (Floss for short) are headlining and I’m entering the venue with some trepidation. Chicago-based duo J2K (Josh Young) and DJ Autobot (Curt Cameruci) are known for their raucous, no-holds-barred sets so I know I’m in for a good show, I’m just not sure I can handle it.

I’ve seen Floss before. They played at the Big Day Out back in 2014. At the time, I’d never heard of them but their killer, high energy set ended up being one of the surprise highlights of the day. I saw them on the Mad Decent Boat Party in November and I had very serious fears they would tear the room apart, if not sink the ship. They were named Into The A.M.’s #1 trap innovators of 2013 and they’ve become regular fixtures on the festival circuit, playing recent sets at Coachella, Ultra, Lollapalooza and SXSW, to name just a few.

Flosstradamus have seemingly mastered the art of trap music, or more specifically, an off-shoot of trap called EDM trap. Trap is a brutal, aggressive sound originally born in the early 2000s on the streets of the American South. It was pioneered by rappers like T.I., with his iconic album Trap Muzik, as well as Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame and Young Jeezy to name a few.

Trap taps into “the particular psychic state – a blend of paranoia and megalomania – that tends to accompany long-term employment as a dealer,” writes Miles Raymer for Reader. Trap DJ Trap-A-Holics tells DJ Mag, “It’s about the trap itself, whatever your definition may be. Some people say the trap’s a certain neighborhood, some say it’s a dope house. At the end of the day it’s just street music. It’s almost like how Dr Dre and Snoop were considered gangster music back in the day: it tells stories from the ‘hood”.

Other words get thrown around when speaking of trap: “epic … gothic … gigantic … scary” (DJ Mag). And they’re right, it is a scary sound. When the final opening act shuts down and the room is filled with silence and darkness, I’m suddenly more than a little bit concerned. I tell myself I’m far enough away from where a mosh pit might reasonably form and this calms me somewhat.

It’s a predominately young crowd, many of them wearing Floss’ HDYNTN branded merchandise. In fact, the familiar ‘warning sign’, a yellow exclamation point inside a triangle, is everywhere: on hats, t-shirts, bandannas, even on flags and proudly brandished tattoos. The whole concert feels like a big warning to anyone who might not belong here; get out while you still can. Floss fans are notoriously rabid. I consider my options for a moment. No, I belong. I like these guys. I’ll stay and see what happens.

Thankfully, we’re not left alone with our thoughts (or fears) for very long. A countdown begins and strobe lights beam around the room. Netting has mysteriously dropped across the stage – the kind reminiscent of dangerous bars where live acts need to be kept safe from wild patrons. J2K and DJ Autobot come out waving HDYNTN flags and wearing bulletproof vests and balaclava-like face masks. The pounding bass kicks in, the crowd goes wild and the show has officially begun.

Floss start off strong with Prison Riot, their collaboration with Lil’ Jon and GTA. The flickering police-like strobes mirror the anarchic lyrics of the song, words like “put your middle fingers up if you don’t give a fuck” and “act up like a motherfuckin’ prison riot”. Sirens and gunshots fill the air, recalling the violence this type of music often glorifies.

They follow this with TTU (Too Turnt Up) which features the hyped up, party-focused lyrics of Wacka Flocka Flame. Josh is literally standing on the DJ booth and there are people throwing their clothing in the air and putting warning signs up (thumbs and index fingers touch to form a triangle). There are people sitting on other people’s shoulders. People are sweating, shaking, throwing themselves from side to side. It’s not so much dancing as something closer to a bass-induced seizure.

The music flows in a steadily pumping rhythm of bass and searing sound. The biggest bass drop so far comes at the end of Floss’ remix of We Dem Boyz by Wiz Khalifa, a perennial favourite about women, money and marijuana. J2K is down in front of the crowd, inciting them to mayhem, before Mosh Pit, one of Floss’ biggest hits, comes crashing in and a thousand-odd voices scream along to the words “Hit the club and turn the crowd into a mosh pit!” The mosh pit doesn’t happen, not yet anyways.

The lights fade to a calming blue and a slightly less bass-y song plays. ILoveMakonnen’s Club Going Up on a Tuesday is a drug dealer’s ode to working hard all weekend and finally getting to cut loose in the club, you guessed it, on a Tuesday. The slow period is short lived, however, and the air is soon shrill with sirens and alarms as Big Sean’s mega hit, IDFWU (I Don’t Fuck With You) screams across us. The whole crowd starts posing and waving their arms around in imitation of the posturing rappers they see in music videos.

In hindsight, every song played falls into one of two categories: party, party, party (and don’t give a damn about the consequences) or the glorification of drugs, drug dealing and its proceeds (namely, money, women and expensive toys). I’m hit with the thought that this is a predominately white audience with presumably little to no experience with the gun-heavy, gang violent culture this music stems from. Looking around the room, I don’t know how many of these kids have ever run afoul of the law – aside from your standard traffic or drunk and disorderly offences – but they can certainly connect with the whole ‘defiance of mainstream authority’ vibe trap music puts out.

You don’t have to be a drug dealer being chased by the cops to understand the feeling of being trapped. You can be trapped in your dead end job. You can be trapped in your parents’ home because you can’t afford to move out (see: aforementioned dead end job). You can be trapped in the feeling of ‘life should be more than this’ that so many of us go out and get wasted to escape from. Our ‘trap’ might not be as extreme as those mentioned in our favourite songs but we feel it just the same. So, while trap music might have originally spoken mainly to black people living in neighbourhoods rife with drug and gang activity, with its catchy hooks and the influx of EDM producers, it quickly found a broader audience.

The next two songs, Who Gon’ Stop Me by Kanye West and Jay Z and Floss’ remix of Original Don by Major Lazer, showcase this crossover. Who Gon’ Stop Me samples I Can’t Stop by Flux Pavilion and was one of the first mainstream hip hop songs to feature an EDM trap sound. Original Don was created by a white man-led group and is more typical of the current EDM trap style, with heavily produced beats and minimal yet still rap-like lyrics.

The blurring of the lines between EDM and trap has become quite a controversial issue in some circles. In Complex, David Drake puts it best when he says, “We’re all forced to choose sides: Trap is good, and can bring artists and fans from different worlds together. Trap is bad because it trivialises serious issues stemming from the American ‘War on Drugs’ and an accelerating prison population”.

According to Reader, when the worlds of trap and EDM mix, we find privileged white producers co-opting and profiting from the primarily black gangbanging, drug-dealing, street violence experience. As Reader notes, “DJ/production duo Flosstradamus have been mixing dance music and rap music for years, so their recent transition into trap was a natural one”. But does that give them, and others like them, the authenticity that so much ‘hood’-based music requires? It’s a contentious question with no clear answer.

As if to remind us all of where their music comes from, Flosstradamus launch into a quick lesson in rap. We start with DMX’s Ruff Ryder’s Anthem and end with Dr Dre’s voice booming “Smoke weed every day!” The words “I’m stoned, I’m stoned, I’m stoned” blast from the speakers and Rollup (the grass) kicks in with green lighting, just in case you missed they’re talking about marijuana.

GQ describes trap music as “ominous melodies, and rhymes about money, power, women, and, above all, dealing drugs”. But, we shouldn’t forget that it’s also about doing drugs. Trap music is deeply connected to weed smoking and ‘purple drank’, a mixture of cough syrup and soda.

And here in this dark, sweaty box, drugs are definitely being done. The fug of marijuana smoke hangs in the air. People everywhere have the wide eyes and jittery jaws associated with methamphetamine use. The euphoria level is abnormally high for normal concert attendance. There’s definitely some assistance of the chemical kind going around. And while marijuana and ‘purple drank’ may be the drug of choice for rappers and purveyors of the original trap music, the fusion with EDM has brought amphetamines into the mix in a big way. Yet while the people in this room might prefer MDMA caps to sipping on ‘purple drank’, they’re still satisfying the same desire to get high and escape from the reality of their lives.

Without missing a beat, the boys belt through a number of huge hits: Lil Wayne’s A Milli, CoCo by O.T. Genasis, Bugatti by Ace Hood and Floss’ remixes of Pillz and Piss Test. These are all songs that tie in tightly with trap and EDM trap’s themes of drugs, drug dealing and partying with absolute abandon, as seen in Piss Test’s lyrics “Fuck a P.O. [parole officer], fuck a piss test” or O.T.’s “I’m in love with the coco … I got baking soda, I got baking soda”, a reference to the creation of crack cocaine.

Just when I think I can’t take any more bass, J2K screams, “This is the last song of the night!” There is a collective sigh. I’m not sure if it’s of relief or disappointment but surely we don’t have much left to give. I certainly don’t. He instructs everyone to get as low to the ground as possible. “If you see someone standing, pull them down. When this shit drops on the count of three, I want everyone to jump up and touch the damn ceiling!”

He counts us down and we’re hit with a massive bass drop. The hair goes up on my arms and I’m swept up in the chaos: the lights, the screams, the vibrations from the bass. Everything’s so intense, almost visceral. It’s almost as if I can feel the bass in my organs, like even my heart has been corralled into following the beat.

Mosh Pit plays again with Josh instructing those down the front to form a mosh pit.

“I want y’all to destroy these niggas – one, two, three, go!”

On his word, people run at each other and begin swirling around in a big, sweaty melee. I see one man, sitting atop another man’s shoulders, getting swished around in the mad whirlpool of people. He soon disappears and I spare a thought for his fate. What happened to him? Has he survived? I can’t imagine so.

Turns out Mosh Pit wasn’t the last song. Rebound featuring Ekka slinks on, a sultry, chilled out vibe and a welcome moment of peace after the madness that was. In a call out to EDM’s mantra of P.L.U.R. (peace, love, unity and respect), Flosstradamus play a voiceover track that seems to sum up the dull glow of love and affinity that has settled over the crowd now that the bass has gone.

“As the sun sets over the earth, the youth from all over the world, thousands of hoody boys and hoody girls, gathered together under one sky, one roof. Your brothers, your sisters, your family raising their warning signs as one, pledging allegiance to one flag, one party. This is Hoody Nation”. These words are greeted with a cacophony of screams and warning signs until Floss leave the stage, the lights come up and everyone comes to terms with the fact they need to re-enter reality.

Almost literally battered and bruised, I begin the journey back into the real world. I couldn’t help but get caught up in the relentless energy of the two showmen and, now that it’s over, a deep, bone-crushing exhaustion settles over me. It feels like I’ve been ‘trapped’ in that black box of bass for days but my watch confirms otherwise. My ears ring. My sweat cools. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.

I feel like I’ve been so swept up in all my job hunting and uni work that I’ve had no time for anyone’s blogs beside my own. I haven’t done any book reviews either, for that matter – but that’s a different story. One step as a time, as the wise people say.

So, to correct my self-absorbed ways, I’ve spent more than a few hours scrolling through WordPress Reader as well as some of my followers’ blogs. It’s mind boggling how much great stuff there is out there. Really, I should have been working on my final uni assignment for this study period but I got swept up in the microcosm of creativity and diversity that is WordPress. I feel like I really went down the rabbit hole on this one!

This is a totally eclectic bunch of blogs. I surfed through all kinds of topics and tags. None of my interests were off limits, everything was investigated. I’m posting these in no particular order (aside from alphabetical because I like things to be neat).

A Journey of a Thousand Miles – this blog is a raw depiction of a life lived with mental illness (depression, bipolar, self-injury, eating disorders, etc.). After how I felt yesterday, I wanted to read a few blogs by people with similar experiences. This blog struck a chord although I would by no means pretend that my short-term mood swings can be compared with actual full-blooded depression.

Janey Does Blogging – Janey keeps a funny, well-written blog filled with stories about her life, observations and the occasional rant. Good for a laugh on any given day.

Jo-Teia’s Kitchen – of course, I had to have a food blog in this list. I was drawn to this particular blog by a post about cinnamon doughnuts that showed up in my Dessert tag Reader. However, one click later and I’d discovered there were all kinds of tasty treats (and not all dessert based). Oh yes, and pictures. V. Important.

Never Too Experienced – this blog features a combination of posts about sex, photography as art, crafty items and honest self-observation. I found it today on Reader and was hooked!

Polyamorousus – I write another blog that lead me to this blog, which is about the experience (emotional and physical) of being in a polyamorous relationship. It touches on some very real issues and is both humorous and serious by turns.

Stryderrsm – this is a bdsm and D/s blog written by a Master about his life with his long term slave. As something I dabbled in when I was younger, I found this site incredibly sexy and interesting and it made me consider things I’d not really thought about for a long time. I’ve never broached this subject with my current partner – maybe after finding this site, I’ll send him a link 😉

A friend recommended this book to me as they thought I would enjoy it. I did but, after finishing it, I’m not sure how to take that statement. What does it say about me that I would enjoy this book? No one can argue that it’s not well written. It’s more that the subject got to me.

Even though I have only read one other Hemingway book (For Whom the Bell Tolls), I still feel like this one is very different from the others. The topic itself seems hugely controversial for the time. The synopsis on the back jacket claims it’s a story of “the dangerous, erotic game” played when a husband and wife both “fall in love with the same woman”. But it’s so much more than that.

*SPOILERS*

It’s the story of a newlywed couple living a life of leisure in Europe. The husband is a writer and the wife seems to come from money. Either way, neither needs to ‘work’ in the conventional sense. They are on permanent holiday, although the husband starts to write again after a time.

In the beginning, everything is fine. They swim and eat and drink to their heart’s content. Then things change. The woman at first seems to just want to dress more like a man, then look more like a man and then finally she brings another woman into their relationship. Chaos and turmoil ensue. The husband goes along with everything although he has his misgivings and resists at some points (although he always caves in the end).

The story is written in Hemingway’s subtle, understated style. We get a beautiful feel for the languor of their existence, the decadence and sometime idleness. He doesn’t spoon feed you all the details, although he does provide many. A lot of things are carefully hidden under the surface and you need to deduce what’s really going on. This is sometimes good, sometimes frustrating but, all in all, I loved the style of writing. He made what could have been such a sordid topic (would have been in today’s style of writing) very elegant and reserved.

What I didn’t like so much was how the wife, who was the catalyst for all the turmoil, was written towards the end. How is it that because she wants to look more manly and be with another woman, she ends up descending into madness? Is it because of when Hemingway was writing this? Do I assume that bisexuality was not as accepted between the 40s and 60s (when Hemingway wrote this book) and this is why the non-conforming female character had to lose her goddamn mind?

I did enjoy the book but this one aspect frustrated me. I felt like it didn’t have to be that way for the wife. Couldn’t she have had a happier ending? Maybe her time was against her. Had she been written in today’s day and age, things might have been different. Or maybe not. Maybe the complication with marriage is that it’s very hard to make it work when there are more than two people involved. Very few of us have the stomach for it.

I say read this book. It makes you think and the writing is beautiful, even if the story doesn’t play out the way you want it to.

I bought this book on the strength of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, which I really enjoyed. You can see a bit of some of those characters, especially the main dude (can’t remember his name), in some of those in this new book. Not a bad thing, I suppose. It’s his style of writing and there’s always (usually) going to be some crossover from book to book.

This particular book has taken me a loooong time to get through. Not because the storyline wasn’t good… it was. There were some twists and turns and it wove together well in most instances. It was his style of writing that drove me crazy. The punctuation was all over the place – truly weird stuff, like he just wrote his own rules – and the writer used a lot of repetition of words and phrases and interjected a lot of sentences with the sounds characters were making. I know why he did these things (maybe not so much with the punctuation). I get it. They serve their purpose. They just annoyed me. They made reading the book more difficult, more tiresome. Something reading should never be.

Aside from the punctuation and such, I did enjoy this book. I liked the way it made the city of Miami part of the story. I liked the larger than life characters, maybe a bit caricature-ish at times, maybe a bit stereotypical. I don’t know, I don’t live in Miami so I can’t say for sure if that’s what it’s like.

It was a decent read even if I didn’t rip through it as I did the last couple of things I’ve read. But then again, I do prefer to be totally possessed by a book, desperate not to have to put it down, desperate to know what happens next. But, then again, that’s just me.

Wow. I couldn’t put this book down. I needed to know what happened next in a very real way.

I haven’t seen the movie so, aside from general comments about how people who’d seen it were now never getting married, I had no idea what to expect. I did have an inkling that things weren’t going to end well though. That much was pretty clear.

Anyways, without ruining anything for anyone, as I steadily worked my way through the book, I thought I had an idea of where things were going. I’d formed some assumptions. I’d taken some sides. All of which was blown completely out of the water about halfway through. Completely and utterly out of the water, to be honest. I had to re-assess my position.

This book was GREAT. The characters were really well developed. After the big twist, I was genuinely at a loss as to where the story would go next. But this wasn’t a bad thing, it just made me read quicker.

And the end…? Yep, as suspected, it doesn’t end well for anyone. But probably not in the way you’d expect. Definitely not in the way I expected. But, I think the book is better for it although, goddamn, if these were real people… Let’s just say it would suck.

This was an interesting read. It drip feeds you information so it takes quite a few pages before you have a full idea of what’s going on. But then it also doesn’t give you all the answers. You get to the end and you’re left holding the book thinking ‘but wait! What about…? Oh and how about…?’

For me, this is not such an amazing thing. I can appreciate the open-ended-ness. I can appreciate the restraint it takes not to spell everything out but I WANT TO KNOW. I don’t want to come up with my own explanations. I want the writer to start, continue and complete the story with all the ends nicely tied up, or at least a little more tied up than it was in this book. Honestly, I don’t need to be spoon-fed everything but I enjoyed this book so much, was so intrigued by what was going on that I just wanted a little bit more closure, I think.

I really can’t say too much without spoiling things for would-be readers but it will definitely leave you wondering about many of the ethical dilemmas we face today. It’s beautifully written and quite funny at times. The protagonist is a bit prickly but I don’t know that I would be any different in her place.

All in all, this is a very fascinating book that raises some very deep, disturbing questions (for me, at least). However, even at surface level, it’s a pretty good story.

I saw a friend reading this book and asked to borrow it. I’d previously read Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (very sad, sometimes shocking but highly recommended) and greatly enjoyed this author’s style of writing. Americanah did not disappoint. It’s beautifully written and easy to read.

It tells the story of Ifemelu and Obinze, young Nigerian lovers separated when Ifemelu moves to the US to continue her university studies (due to constant strikes in her home country). After completing university, Obinze spends time as an illegal immigrant in the UK before returning to Nigeria and becoming very successful. Ifemelu becomes a prominent blog writer in the US but nevertheless decides to return home.

We’re told stories of their experience as immigrants, as newly minted minorities, in their new countries but we’re also told of their life in Nigeria, their upbringing and experiences and those of their families. We can see what each person lost and gained by their relocation, how much can be sacrificed by people searching for a better life in a new country. Their experiences are laid bare with equal measures brutal honesty and humour.

When they both return to Nigeria, we see the changes in both Ifemelu and Obinze and in the country, under its new government. They dance around one another. Will they or won’t they get back together?

As a previous immigrant (to Jamaica) and always minority wherever I go (not many other Australian-Puerto-Ricans, I’m guessing), I was able to draw many parallels to my own experiences. However, my life was much easier compared to what goes on in Americanah. My friend who read it and isn’t a minority said she found the book incredibly eye-opening. It’s hard for a person who isn’t a minority to ‘know what they don’t know’. When a whole society is geared towards your race/class/gender, you don’t, can’t really see how privileged you are.

Personally, I blitzed through the book, not wanting to put it down, always wanting to know what would happen next, even though its not a thriller or a book where you’d expect any kind of crazy twist at the end. If nothing else, it’s at least a thought provoking and fascinating book about race, immigration, class, love, hell even gender. Definitely recommended.